The Terminator loosely follows the plot of the 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger film. The main levels of the game consist of side-scrolling jumping and shooting action. In between levels are car chases where the Terminator attempts to run you down as you race to your next destination.
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The Terminator for NES is legendary... for all the wrong reasons. You play as Kyle Reese, but the controls are awful, the level design is confusing, and the graphics are so bad you can't even tell what's going on most of the time. It's frustrating, borderline unplayable, but also kinda hilarious if you approach it with the right (awful) mindset. This game is like a relic from a terrible, but wonderful, era of gaming.
Emphatically not the same game as the NES version but IGDB is full of agents of Satan so here we are. Probably not much better, though. I can't be fucked to make a new game page myself so if it ever shows up I'll have to relocate this over there.
Undoubtedly one of the weakest run-and-gun games on the console, though it probably beats out Bits Studios' port of GunForce (which is not at all high praise). It starts out decently manageable, if still subpar and drab, but the rooftop level is where shit hits the fan. It features tons of dead ends, minibosses that stop you dead in your tracks making it hard to avoid taking damage, and Spelunker-esque death by falling too far. Without hitting the ground, even. At first I had assumed they accidentally set the kill plane too high or something.
It's also very ugly, by the way. This game was handled by Gray Matter, also responsible for gems such as The Incredible Crash Dummies and Wayne's World, and it looks incredibly similar to those games (very ugly). It's odd in this instance because the few animated cutscenes are not bad at all and it also features a pretty faithful recreation of the original movie's title card. Maybe that was where all the budget went.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day received a SNES adaptation just seven months later in November of 1993, by none other than Bits Studios, published by none other than LJN. Most exciting indeed! Which game do you think will be worse? Which coughing baby will you place your bets on? To find out who wins, tune in next time! Or eventually, at least.
Undoubtedly one of the weakest run-and-gun games on the console, though it probably beats out Bits Studios' port of GunForce (which is not at all high praise). It starts out decently manageable, if still subpar and drab, but the rooftop level is where shit hits the fan. It features tons of dead ends, minibosses that stop you dead in your tracks making it hard to avoid taking damage, and Spelunker-esque death by falling too far. Without hitting the ground, even. At first I had assumed they accidentally set the kill plane too high or something.
It's also very ugly, by the way. This game was handled by Gray Matter, also responsible for gems such as The Incredible Crash Dummies and Wayne's World, and it looks incredibly similar to those games (very ugly). It's odd in this instance because the few animated cutscenes are not bad at all and it also features a pretty faithful recreation of the original movie's title card. Maybe that was where all the budget went.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day received a SNES adaptation just seven months later in November of 1993, by none other than Bits Studios, published by none other than LJN. Most exciting indeed! Which game do you think will be worse? Which coughing baby will you place your bets on? To find out who wins, tune in next time! Or eventually, at least.
(NES version)
...well I'll give it this, it was pretty short and mostly easy
...well I'll give it this, it was pretty short and mostly easy
I beat this game, but only because Kyle Reese told me I had to.
This is a review of the NES one not the SNES one.
Another fucking terrible Arnold game. I mean seriously why are they all terrible?
This game has bad game design at almost every turn. to shoot you have to go into a weird crouching mode and there's just no flow of combat. Also combat in general just sucks ass.
The platforming is GARBAGE. The model of your character and the model of the platforms aren't actually true, so you'll repeatedly go for a jump and miss as you watch your foot just go straight through the platform. It's a cruel joke.
There are absolutely no redeeming qualities about this game, please don't play it.
Another fucking terrible Arnold game. I mean seriously why are they all terrible?
This game has bad game design at almost every turn. to shoot you have to go into a weird crouching mode and there's just no flow of combat. Also combat in general just sucks ass.
The platforming is GARBAGE. The model of your character and the model of the platforms aren't actually true, so you'll repeatedly go for a jump and miss as you watch your foot just go straight through the platform. It's a cruel joke.
There are absolutely no redeeming qualities about this game, please don't play it.
The Terminator is a platformer developed by Radical Entertainment based on the film of the same name. I'm pretty confident that most people only know of this game due to the Angry Video Game Nerd episode, and it definitely lives up to its nasty reputation.
The game takes place in the future war, putting you in the shoes of Kyle Reese, before later cherry-picking scenes from the movie for its set pieces. The game design is poor at best and nigh-unplayable at worst. Reese's hitbox is much smaller than his actual sprite, leading to many moments where you fall to your death despite having collided with the platform. The controls are also very floaty and this leads to difficulty in avoiding enemies. Normally you'd want to jump over the terminators' projectiles but you'll usually end up leaping right back into danger. There's also the infamous turret section that, even with an ample supply of grenades, is still pretty unfair as it's nigh impossible to destroy them without getting hit a fair few times. I didn't get much further than this, so the game might improve later on, but from what I've heard it doesn't.
The presentation is also rather ugly. The game starts at a hideous sewer level that not only looks bad but feels out of place with the film. Sprite work is basic at best and backgrounds are a mess of drab colors and messy tiles. The color palette not only fails to replicate the haunting blues and purples of the film's future war segments but is also unnecessarily muddy, with Radical having chosen the most vomit-inducing colors possible. This is, of course, complemented by the repetitive soundtrack, consisting of only a few simple beats and buzzes, not adding to the atmosphere at all.
I don't really know what I expected but The Terminator is probably one of the worst games I've ever played and feels like a low-effort no-budget project made in a month. The film itself could translate very well to a game, but Radical clearly wasn't up to the task. It's hard to give constructive criticism in this case because everything fails so monumentally that it really would be a better idea to just redo the game entirely from the ground up.
The game takes place in the future war, putting you in the shoes of Kyle Reese, before later cherry-picking scenes from the movie for its set pieces. The game design is poor at best and nigh-unplayable at worst. Reese's hitbox is much smaller than his actual sprite, leading to many moments where you fall to your death despite having collided with the platform. The controls are also very floaty and this leads to difficulty in avoiding enemies. Normally you'd want to jump over the terminators' projectiles but you'll usually end up leaping right back into danger. There's also the infamous turret section that, even with an ample supply of grenades, is still pretty unfair as it's nigh impossible to destroy them without getting hit a fair few times. I didn't get much further than this, so the game might improve later on, but from what I've heard it doesn't.
The presentation is also rather ugly. The game starts at a hideous sewer level that not only looks bad but feels out of place with the film. Sprite work is basic at best and backgrounds are a mess of drab colors and messy tiles. The color palette not only fails to replicate the haunting blues and purples of the film's future war segments but is also unnecessarily muddy, with Radical having chosen the most vomit-inducing colors possible. This is, of course, complemented by the repetitive soundtrack, consisting of only a few simple beats and buzzes, not adding to the atmosphere at all.
I don't really know what I expected but The Terminator is probably one of the worst games I've ever played and feels like a low-effort no-budget project made in a month. The film itself could translate very well to a game, but Radical clearly wasn't up to the task. It's hard to give constructive criticism in this case because everything fails so monumentally that it really would be a better idea to just redo the game entirely from the ground up.